Five Minute Water Wheel Stress Reduction Exercise

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In our busy world, having your patients make a commitment to a practice of meditation is a goal bigger than most of them feel they can handle.

I like to do a brief exercise with my patients and ask them to repeat it repeatedly over the course of the next several weeks. I call it the “Water Wheel” exercise. In case you’re not sure what a water wheel is, here’s a picture:

The first step in this process is to teach about breath. I suggest you walk through this with your patients a number of times during your session to make sure they can perform the exercise. I've only had one patient that was so out of touch with their breathing they were unable to do it after just one attempt. So, have them pay attention to their breathing for a moment. Instruct them to imagine it divided into 4 parts: 1. Inhale 2. Pause at the top of the inhale 3. Exhale 4. Pause at the bottom of the exhale. As they are mindful of their breath, instruct them to allow each of these parts to become equal to each other, forming a smooth rhythm.

Now, instruct the to visualize a water wheel which moves in a smooth circular motion. have them imagine their breath coming over the top of the wheel and as the drops of water would splash over them, the breath falls into them. Then comes the pause at the bottom of the wheel as they prepare for the exhale. The bottom of the wheel is where the water hits the wheel and pushes it. And so their breath should push the bottom of the wheel along its circular journey in their imagination. As the wheel lifts up on the other side of the wheel, they experience the pause before the inhale.

As they imagine their breath keeping time with the wheel it can help if they close their eyes. I even instruct my patients to move their head and upper body in a circular motion to experience the visualization more fully. have them do at least 5 breaths along this visualization.

As you can probably tell, this takes LESS than 5 minutes. I call it 5 minutes because I assign this exercise to be done each and every time they…..go to the restroom. Yep. You usually take a potty break multiple times a day so this makes that a convenient touchpoint. If they will commit to do the breathing at every visit to the restroom, they will have many practice attempts. After they have done this a while, they will begin to have the same relaxation response immediately upon dropping into the visualization. Give it a try and let me know how it goes! If you have any additional questions or comments you can reach me at allison@allisonvelez.com